Bowlby, in the penultimate paragraph of the third and last volume of Attachment and Loss, writes:
Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves, not only when he is an infant or a toddler or a schoolchild but throughout his adolescence and his years of maturity as well, and on into old age. From these intimate attachments a person draws his strength and enjoyment of life and, through what he contributes, he gives strength and enjoyment to others. These are matters about which current science and traditional wisdom are at one.6
I have been a consistent admirer of Bowlby’s work since I first encountered it. Because of his insistence that psycho-analytic observations must be supported by objective stuthes, and because of his use of ethological concepts, he has done more than any other psycho-analyst to link psycho-analysis with science. But attachment theory, in my view, does less than justice to the importance of work, to the emotional significance of what goes on in the mind of the individual when he is alone, and, more especially, to the central place occupied by the imagination in those who are capable of creative achievement. Intimate attachments are a hub around which a person’s life revolves, not necessarily the hub.
‘We must reserve a little back-shop, all our own, entirety free, wherein to establish our true liberty and principal retreat and solitude.’
Montaigne
In infancy and early childhood, attachment to parents or to parent substitutes is essential if the child is to survive, and secure attachment probably necessary if it is to develop into an adult capable of making intimate relationships with other adults on equal terms. Although broken homes are deplorably common in Western society, parents who are concerned about their children’s well-being try to provide them with a stable, loving background which will promote secure attachment and the growth of self-confidence. In addition, most parents will try to ensure that their children have plenty of opportunity to encounter and to play with other children of the same age. In both sub-human primates and in human beings, secure attachment between mother and infant encourages exploratory behaviour. A child who is sure of his mother’s availability will generally want to explore his immediate environment, play with toys, and come into contact with whatever else may be in the room, including other children. There is some evidence to suggest that children as young as eighteen months old benefit from being allowed to mix with their peers. It is certain that interaction with children of the same age provides opportunities for learning social skills which are not provided by interaction between parents and child.
For example, rough-and-tumble play, which is important in learning how to handle aggression, is common between children of the same age, but rare between parent and child. Attitudes to sex are generally acquired from other children rather than learned from parents. The study of adults who complain of sexual difficulties often discloses that, as children, they were unusually isolated. Because they did not learn from other children that sexual curiosity and sexual impulses are universal, they grew up feeling themselves to be different from others; perhaps uniquely evil.
In Chapter 1, we saw that most adult human beings want both intimate relationships and the sense of belonging to a community. In childhood, secure attachment to parents or to parent-substitutes is vital; but relationships with other children also provide social experience of a kind which is irreplaceable.
There has been, and continues to be, a great deal of research on these two aspects of child development; but virtually no discussion of whether it is ever valuable for children to be alone. Yet if it is considered desirable to foster the growth of the child’s imaginative capacity, we should ensure that our children, when they are old enough to enjoy it, are given time and opportunity for solitude. Many creative adults have left accounts of childhood feelings of mystical union with Nature; peculiar states of awareness, or ‘Intimations of Immortality’, as Wordsworth called them. Such accounts are furnished by characters as diverse as Walt Whitman, Arthur Koesder, Edmund Gosse, A. L. Rowse and C. S. Lewis. We may be sure that such moments do not occur when playing football, but chiefly when the child is on its own. Bernard Berenson’s description is particularly telling. He refers to moments when he lost himself in ‘some instant of perfect harmony’.
In childhood and boyhood this ecstasy overtook me when I was happy out of doors. Was I five or six? Certainly not seven. It was a morning in early summer. A silver haze shimmered and trembled over the lime trees. The air was laden with their fragrance. The temperature was like a caress. I remember – I need not recall – that I climbed up a tree stump and felt suddenly immersed in Itness. I did not call it by that name. I had no need for words. It and I were one.1
A. L. Rowse describes similar experiences when he was a schoolboy in Cornwall.
I could not know then it was an early taste of aesthetic sensation, a kind of revelation which has since become a secret touchstone of experience for me, an inner resource and consolation. Later on, though still a schoolboy – now removed downhill to the secondary school – when I read Wordsworth’s ‘Tintern Abbey’ and ‘Intimations of Immortality’, I realised that that was the experience he was writing about.2
Modern psychotherapists, including myself, have taken as their criterion of emotional maturity the capacity of the individual to make mature relationships on equal terms. With few exceptions, psychotherapists have omitted to consider the fact that the capacity to be alone is also an aspect of emotional maturity.
One such exception is the psycho-analyst, Donald Winnicott. In 1958, Winnicott published a paper on ‘The Capacity to be Alone’ which has become a psycho-analytic classic. Winnicott wrote:
It is probably true to say that in psycho-analytical literature more has been written on the fear of being alone or the wish to be alone than on the ability to be alone; also a considerable amount of work has been done on the withdrawn state, a defensive organization implying an expectation of persecution. It would seem to me that a discussion on the positive aspects of the capacity to be alone is overdue.3
In Chapter 1,1 referred to Bowlby’s work on the early attachment of the human infant to its mother, and to the sequence of protest, despair, and detachment, which habitually occurs when the infant’s mother is removed. In normal circumstances, if no disastrous severance of the bond between mother and infant has occurred, the child gradually becomes able to tolerate longer periods of maternal absence without anxiety. Bowlby believes that confidence in the availability of attachment figures is gradually built up during the years of immaturity; more particularly during the period from the age of six months to five years, when attachment behaviour is most readily elicited. However, sensitivity to the presence or absence of attachment figures continues until well into adolescence. Many middle-class English children who had experienced total security in early childhood have had their expectations rudely shattered when sent to boarding school at the age of seven or eight.
It is generally recognized that clinging behaviour is indicative of insecurity. The child who will not let the mother leave, even for short periods, is the child who has no confidence in her return. Conversely, the child who has developed trust in the availability of attachment figures is the child who can increasingly experience being left by such figures without anxiety. Thus, the capacity to be alone is one aspect of an inner security which has
